My college covered basic C topics such as functions, recursion, pointers, structs, and unions. I also taught myself JavaScript for web development and can build reasonably polished websites, so I understand programming logic at a basic level. However, I feel that my deeper knowledge is still limited. I want to reach the point where I can independently create a small indie game and understand the more complex concepts involved, rather than simply copying tutorials. There are hundreds of courses and tutorials available, but none seems to cover everything in a coherent order. How should I structure my learning, and what kinds of projects or resources would help me improve?
4 Answers
The transition from following tutorials to making your own programs usually feels uncomfortable because you have to work through incomplete and broken ideas. That is exactly where the learning happens. Start without a step-by-step guide, accept that the first versions will be messy, and gradually increase the size of your projects. A finished, simple game teaches more than an ambitious project that never gets completed.
If your main goal is broad programming knowledge rather than specifically shipping a game, consider projects in other areas too. A small backend service, command-line tool, or data-structure implementation can teach valuable skills without requiring you to learn an entire game engine. Learn C through focused exercises involving memory, pointers, files, and data structures, then apply those ideas in progressively larger programs. After that, learning C++ or another language will be easier because you will understand the underlying concepts instead of only memorizing syntax.
There is no single resource that teaches all of programming, because games involve many separate areas: language fundamentals, data structures, algorithms, mathematics, graphics, input, audio, architecture, and tools. Choose one language and one engine, complete an introductory course, then use small projects to expose the gaps in your knowledge. For a beginner, a lightweight engine such as Godot can be less distracting than learning a large engine and all of its workflows at once. Build Pong, Minesweeper, Sokoban, or a basic platformer, then move to something like Pac-Man.
Pick an engine or framework and start building something immediately. Make the first project tiny: Pong, a simple platformer, or an asteroid shooter. Implement one feature at a time—movement, collisions, projectiles, sound, scoring, and game-over states—and research each problem when you reach it. You do not need one tutorial that covers everything; combining documentation, several small examples, and questions from other developers is normal. Avoid multiplayer for now since networking adds a lot of complexity that will distract from the fundamentals.
That makes sense. I was mainly looking for a structured way to understand C and the underlying concepts, not necessarily a single game-design tutorial. I would like to learn C thoroughly before moving on to C++, Python, and eventually Rust.